This blog has always been about chasing down the places that spark my curiosity and finding out everything I can about them. Most recently, I’ve discovered that my daily commute from Muncie to Anderson is packed with sites to absorb! I’ve spotted several that made me reach for my phone and snap a quick photo, so here are seven hasty shots of buildings I haven’t written about yet.
Most mornings, my commute takes me down State Road 32. Between Yorktown and Daleville, there’s a long, low building just past a sharp curve that looks just like an old-school motel. Unfortunately, here’s the kicker: no one I’ve talked to remembers it ever being one. For what it’s worth, I remember an enormous pair of plywood scissors mounted out front when I was a kid. For now, the structure -which was built in 19601– remains a mystery.
This McClure’s gas station sits just past Daleville. Up until the early 2000s, the property was home to a Phillips 66 with its unmistakable triangular awning. Earlier than either station, though, the place was called Bubbling Springs2. The name had me wondering if a flowing well might have burbled up nearby. I’m still not sure, but the bubbling springs seem to survive! Unfortunately, they’re on a separate parcel about a eight hundred feet northwest of the gas station. I’ve got the contact info to arrange a visit, but I haven’t reached out yet.
The George Makepeace House stands right in the heart of downtown Chesterfield, where State Road 32 meets Water Street. Built in 1850, the 2.5-story, five-bay Federal-style structure once pulled double duty: its west side housed family quarters, while the eastern portion was home to commercial facilities. Those included a mercantile, an apothecary3, and, later, the local telephone exchange4. One day, I’ll take some better photos and give it a write-up that the landmark deserves.
Harvest Super Market sits on the west side of Chesterfield, just beyond the excellent Juan’s Mexican Grill & Bar I’ve written about before. It’s part of a small, eight-store chain founded by Larry Vores back in 1976, and I find myself stopping in nearly every day. With something like six or eight aisles, Harvest strikes a perfect balance between small-town charm and modern convenience. The employees are friendly, the meat department is award-winning, and the checkout even takes Apple Pay! If it weren’t for the tech upgrades, shopping there would feel like stepping back in time. I plan on digging deeper into its homegrown history.
From the 1960s to the 1990s and early 2000s, my hometown was home to several Miller Milkhouses, an early chain of dairy-oriented convenience stores. Anderson’s version was called the Milk Barn. In 1974, the city was home to six of them5! The Milk Barn name appears to have gone the way of the dodo, but most of the buildings remain standing under a variety of other uses. One of them is at the corner of 29th Street and Dr. MLK Jr. Boulevard, and I see it every day as I leave work. I’d love to find all the old Milk Barns and write about them.
I pass this old house every evening, and it never fails to catch my eye. Its original front porch looks to have been boarded in long ago, when someone added a concrete-and-brick storefront to the basement level. The Madison County Assessor lists its build date as 19506, but that seems way off. I vaguely remember reading that the storefront once housed a barber shop, but I haven’t been able to track that down. Still, it’s the kind of building that feels like it’s hanging onto a story.
This towering landmark once buzzed with energy- almost literally. It was home to the shops of the Union Traction Company, one of Indiana’s earliest and most important interurban rail lines. While a nearby powerhouse supplied the electricity to keep Anderson’s trolleys running, this building was where the real work happened: interurban cars were built, inspected, and repaired right here7! In recent memory, the old traction shop has seen new life as everything from Parallax Power Supply to Broadway Auto Boat & RV Storage and, currently, Victory RV Service and Repair. It’s the kind of place that deserves a deep-dive, and one day I’ll take it on.
I’ve found that my commute is packed with interesting sights and hidden gems. Whether I’m cutting through quiet neighborhoods on Broadway in Anderson or zipping down State Road 32 in Daleville, I always seem to pass something worth a second look. Some of the places are ones I know well and have written up already. Others I’ve been meaning to learn more about. All of them remind me that history isn’t just found in museums- it’s hiding in plain sight, right along the road home.
Sources Cited
1 Parcel 1031200006000 (2025). Delaware County Assessor’s Office [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
2 City’s Record (1955, January 1). The Anderson Herald. p. 2.
3 Hidden Treasures of Madison County (n.d.). George Makepeace House. The Anderson Herald-Bulletin. Web. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
4 National Register of Historic Places, George Makepeace House, Chesterfield, Madison County, Indiana, National Register # 85000596.
5 Milk Barn Food Stores (1974, November 14). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 2.
6 Parcel 48-11-13-204-034.000-003 (2025). Madison County Assessor’s Office [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
7 Union Traction Company Shops (n.d.). The Anderson Public Library [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved June 5, 2025.
Cool post! I pass places all the time that I would love to research, especially old commercial and industrial buildings.
The house with the boarded up porch looks to sit next door to its mirror image twin.
I hadn’t noticed the twin. Good eye! I could probably fill a week with posts like this.
Chesterfield Harvest will always be Murphy’s Pic N’Pay to me. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/976588141/
Always wondered what it’d been before, but hadn’t looked yet. Thanks for the link!
It’s amazing the things you can spot if you keep your eyes open. I don’t know if you explored the south side of Fort Wayne while you were here but before the Nickle Plate RR was elevated in 1955, the south side was the booming part of Fort Wayne. Now there are many relatively small business buildings that were once some of the major companies of the day which now have less desirable businesses in them. Makes any trip downtown from the south interesting.
I’m fairly familiar with the main roads -Fairfield, Bluffton, etc, but never spent a lot of time exploring. Maybe I’ll have to! PS- I’ve got a Fort Wayne long line post brewing.
Calhoun St and Harrison ST had a lot of development. And there was a collection of shops on South Wayne Ave. a couple blocks South of Rudisill that was known as South Wayne much like Waynedale was once a separate area before it was annexed. Hall’s Restaurants first shop was there, started as a Meat Market in the 1950s.
The maybe-a-motel/not-a-motel building is indeed interesting. Here is a photo from 1976 without any real clues as to its past function: https://vintageaerial.com/photos/indiana/delaware/1976/EDL/50/29
Great photo. I’ve since met the farmer who has owned the land across the street probably since the place was built. I’ll have to shoot him an email to see what he knows!
I grew up in Muncie — I think that Muncie also had at least one “Milk Barn”, at least in the 1970s. If it is the place I am thinking of, we would drive up to it and get milk (and maybe a loaf of bread) handed to us through the driver’s side car window. It was at the corner of McGalliard and Wheeling, across Wheeling from the Northwest Plaza.
I have been driving between Noblesville and Muncie quite a bit this year, and I have tried different routes out, because I find highway 69 traffic to be hectic and I’d rather spend an extra 15 minutes driving on a pleasant road than have a white-knuckled experience dodging semis in both lanes for 45 minutes. I enjoyed taking 32 from Noblesville to Anderson… Even though I grew up in Muncie, then lived overseas for almost 2 decades in several countries where I travelled around a lot on my own and loved to explore — until this trip from Noblesville to Muncie on highway 32 this summer, I had never been to Anderson before! Which is obviously really odd, but my family just didn’t get out of Muncie much when I was growing up. (We really didn’t even get out of our neighborhood much, so there are many places in Muncie I’ve never been to.) Therefore, when my GPS guided me from being on 32 heading into Anderson to suddenly driving down 8th Street, I could not believe the amazing houses and the (much faded) atmosphere of that historical district of Anderson, which I had not known about before. I also had previously had no idea that the downtown of Anderson was as “big” as it is, with several large churches, the former library, etc. I guess I had incorrectly assumed that most of Anderson was what could be seen from highway 69 on the way to Indy. When I got to Muncie, I looked online to find out more of the history of the 2 main historical districts of Anderson, old photos of the 8th St. houses I had driven past, etc. So sad, how our two little cities have declined so much in the last 40 years.
One place I like to drive by, on my way from Noblesville to Muncie, is the old round barn that is on the country road that 332 turns into after it crosses 69 heading west. Have you seen it? If not, it’s not far on the other side of 69.
Ted, what is the building in the photo at the top of your May 14, 2025 post? What is the little white building pictured in the middle of your June 29, 2025 post? You don’t identify a lot of places in your photos!
In one or two of your posts about the Muncie Mall (which is how I found your site tonight because I was trying to find out what was happening to Penneys), it seemed that you might have been indicating that LS Ayres only came to the mall in 1996 or something, but it was there before that, because I worked there from 1984-86. It was the middle anchor store, not one of those out on a “wing”. I think maybe that’s the position that Elder-Beerman later occupied.
You mentioned in a post that your health insurance won’t cover psoriasis, and I am wondering what kind of insurance you have. Do you have insurance through an employer? If not, are you not able to get on either a Marketplace plan or Medicaid plan that covers most mainstream medical issues, including skin concerns? There should be some accessible plans that would definitely cover your psoriasis, so I hope you will look into that — it will soon be the enrollment period for getting 2026 plans.
Best wishes, stay strong, stay curious. 🙂
Hi M., thanks for commenting! Muncie had Miller Milkhouse, which is what you might be thinking of. Similar to Anderson’s Milk Barn, I think. I’ve written about them before, they were also in Richmond. My family stopped at the one around Jackson and Martin most often: https://tedshideler.com/2023/10/08/miller-milkhouses-would-have-been-perfect-in-the-pandemic/
How funny you’d never been to Anderson! I agree about its expansive downtown and the West Eighth Street historic district. There are so many parallels between Muncie and Anderson that its uncanny.
I live in Muncie and drive to Anderson for work. I’m very familiar with the round barn you mentioned! I have no idea why Ive never stopped for a picture or two. I’ll have to do that someday on my evening commute.
The photo on the May 14 post is Jay County’s old Oak Grove schoolhouse, which sits just off Highway 1 between Redkey and Pennville: https://tedshideler.com/2023/01/05/knox-townships-oak-grove-schoolhouse-in-jay-county/
The white building in the 6/29 post is the former ice house of the Bleak Hall plantation at Edisto Island, South Carolina: https://tedshideler.com/2023/06/05/the-remains-of-bleak-hall-plantation-on-edisto-island/
I should have made it more clear in my post about the mall that Ayres was situated in the building that later became Elder Beerman/Carson’s before the new wing was built in 1996. I’ll make that change now.
Regarding insurance, I have it through my employer. They refuse to cover a steroid cream that eliminates the psoriasis. Instead, they allow a weaker cream that has no practical effect.
Thanks again for stopping by and commenting! I hope you stick around. If one post doesn’t interest you, it’s likely that the next day’s will.
Ted